How to Change Desktop Environment in Fedora 9
 

In Fedora 9, how to change the default display manager and desktop environment? I remember in previous releases, I can do this by putting "DISPLAYMANAGER=KDE" and "DESKTOP=KDE" in /etc/sysconfig/desktop. But there is such file in Fedora 9. I added it and rebooted my box, however no effect at all.

I also found another problem when setting language preference. Before I can do this by putting "LANG=..." in ~/.i18n, but now it doesn't work anymore.

So anyone knows how to deal with these annoying problems? Thanks a lot!

You can start a different desktop environment from the login screen. Choose the "Session" menu and it'll list the desktops you have.

Note, the 'Session' menu doesn't display if a user is already selected, which is what it defaults to (on my install).

You have to click 'Other...' on the logon screen before the 'Session' menu appears.

yum install switchdesk

Look in /etc/X11/prefdm
It explains where it's grabbing DISPLAYMANAGER from. Of course we all know this is /etc/sysconfig/desktop but just make sure something is not malformed in that file.

use the command "switchdesk KDE" OR "switchdesk GNOME".
If switchdesk not found, install it using "yum install switchdesk"

-- Its very easy in Fedora/Red Hat EL